Today our world is ignoring that our oceans are in danger, they do not think of the consequences that man kind has on the oceans with industrialized agriculture or livestock. I often here people say well I do not live in the ocean so why should I care? The ocean is crucial to the way the whole world works, every ecosystem needs the others to survive. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution published 20 facts about ocean acidification in November of 2013. 1: Ocean acidification is a progressive increase in the acidity of the ocean over an extended period of time.2: OA has been well documented with global observations by hundreds of researchers around the world. It has been definitively attributed to human generated CO2 in the atmosphere that has been released primarily by fossil fuel combustion and land use changes. 3: Acidity may be thought of as simply the hydrogen ion concentration(H*) in a liquid, and the pH is the logarithmic scale on which this concentration is measured. Acidity increases the pH decreases. 4: Average global surface ocean pH has fallen from a pre-industrialized value of 8.2 to 8.1, followed by an increase of about 30% acidity.5: The pH of the open-ocean surface layer is unlikely to ever become acidic because seawater is buffered by dissolved salt. 6: OA is also changing seawater carbonate chemistry. 7: Changes in the pH and carbonate chemistry force marine organisms to spend more energy regulating chemistry in their cells. 8: Many shell-forming marine organisms are very sensitive to changes in pH and carbonate chemistry. 9: The biological impacts of OA will vary, because different organisms have different sensitivities to seawater chemistry.10: Impacts from OA at any life stage can reduce the ability of population to grow or recover from losses due to disturbance or stress, even though news reports have often focused on juvenile forms that are highly vulnerable to OA. 11: OA will not kill all ocean life but will change the oceans forever and might not be reversible. 12: Regions where there is natural up welling of colder, low pH, deep water onto the continental shelves, and coastal regions with freshwater discharge are particularly vulnerable to OA.

The decreasing alkalinity of the oceans, and exponential population increase are the two biggest problems facing humanity.

CO2 from burning COAL is the biggest source of human caused "ocean acidification".The worlds biggest coal producers: China, USA and Australia are poisoning the atmosphere and the oceans and thus significantly decreasing the biological diversity that supports the oceans. If the oceans die, the human population will too.

Of course the Australians deny any part in this; the US and China pretend it's not happening.

Stop buying products made in those countries and get those countries to STOP exporting and burning COAL if you want less toxic pollution and GHGs. If you're supporting their economies then you are complicit in "ocean acidification".

galt: while you rail about the damage done by the manufacture of some renewable energy devices, consider this case: At risk from Ocean Acidification and AGW, Tokelau may be a world leader in kicking the fossil habit.Note that transporting fossil fuels to remote locations changes the equation- as does the supply of coconut oil http://pacificvoyagers.org/tok...in-renewable-energy/

B.C. shellfish producers and restaurant owners are bracing themselves for another price hike for the Pacific delicacies as ocean acidification makes it more difficult for oysters, mussels and scallops to survive.

The largest source of CO2 that's causing decreasing alkalinity of the oceans is burning coal.Australia exports more coal than any other country. It's destroying the Great Barrier Reef.Their economic 'comfort' is obviously more important then the health of the oceans.Judging by the obnoxious, abrasive, and abusive attitudes expressed by Aussies on this forum like Tilly the Troll, it's easy to see why they only care about their economic well being and screw the rest.

The electricity and heating I use comes from renewable sources, does yours?

It's hypocritical that anyone concerned about 'ocean acidification' would be making excuses for Australia's coal economy, which produces 5x the GHGs that Canada does. Such hypocrites don't really care about the decreasing alkalinity of the oceans, it's just an excuse to be trolls.

In Canada, tar sands mining operations are demolishing thousands of acres of ancient forest to the size of England and placing more species on the edge of extinction. Canadian Tar Sands mining is damaging the world’s third-largest watershed, killing millions of migrating birds that help to fertilize the continent and help control insect populations throughout the Americas.

Canadian Tar Sands is reducing all forms of land animals; poisoning rivers and lakes, and leaving behind horribly toxic ponds so expansive that they can be seen from space.

Tar Sands mining is spewing acidic gasses into the atmosphere that end up in the lakes and oceans increasing ocean acidification across the planet which threatens every life form on Earth.

Big Oil is spending millions of dollars on ads, desperately trying to convince Canadians that the tar sands are not harming their air. A new report, Reality Check: Air Pollution and the Tar Sands, sets the record straight Air pollution from the tar sands is already reaching Alberta’s existing limits on pollution.Alberta tar sands companies frequently break existing environmental rules, and aren’t penalized when they break these rules. This isn’t responsible resource management.

The report describes that if tar sands production triples as industry wants, it would mean a 230 per cent increase in nitrogen oxides pollution, a 160 per cent increase in sulphur dioxide emissions and a 190 per cent increase in particulate matter – each of these can damage both human and environmental health.

It's hypocritical that anyone concerned about 'ocean acidification' would be making excuses for Alberta's tar sands industry which produces the dirtiest fuel in the world from the dirtiest oil in the world

From 1850 to the present, human activities have resulted in the addition of about 155 ± 25 Pg C to the oceans (34). Projections for further carbon uptake depend strongly on the trajectory of fossil fuel emissions and land use, among other factors (34, 35). Figure 4 compares the critical mass to the present accumulation and four projections to 2100 obtained from coupled climate–carbon cycle models (34). The strictest emission scenario results in oceanic carbon uptake whose mean falls just below the critical mass; at the other extreme, the mean model uptake is about 74% greater than critical. Although the uncertainty of each prediction in Fig. 4 is considerable, all scenarios for cumulative uptake at the century’s end either exceed or are commensurate with the threshold for catastrophic change.

Very serious $hit//Abstract The five mass extinction events that the earth has so far experienced have impacted coral reefs as much or more than any other major ecosystem. Each has left the Earth without living reefs for at least four million years. By process of elimination, primary causes of mass extinctions are linked in various ways to the carbon cycle in general and ocean chemistry in particular with clear association with atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The prospect of ocean acidification is potentially the most serious of all predicted outcomes of anthropogenic carbon dioxide increase. This study concludes that acidi- fication has the potential to trigger a sixth mass extinction.